Rovinj - Tuesday 29 May 2018

As I said yesterday we were not sure where we would wind up today.  We both wanted to see Rovinj, another ancient town with walls and Venetian buildings.  ACI are building a new marina here and all their literature says it will be open for this sailing season.  However when we tried to ring them we think all we got through to was a builder.  The pilot book says there is an anchorage which is suitable for a lunch stop over.  The Bora can get bad here and better shelter is needed for the night.  Richard’s idea was to pop in and see what there is and then decide.  So we set off just after 8am and got here at about 11:30.  As ever there was no wind except for about an hour when there was 10 knots on the nose.  When we got in we saw there is a town wall with rings and buoys to pick up for the bows.  Now this reminded me of Hvar last year where we had to be rescued before we hit another boat.  So I was not keen on stopping at all, but R said it would be fine!

Well, we didn’t do too badly.  After our errors at Hvar I knew that we needed a really long line on the buoy.  So we got out our brand new 16 metre lines we bought at the boat show and shipped to Italy.  Even then one was not enough and we had to tie a second one to it.  I did manage to pick up the buoy first go with the yellow peril, but by the time we got the second line on the boat had drifted and it took quite a lot of bow thrusting to get in line.  Richard was going to try to get off to take the stern lines, but luckily the skipper of the boat next door came and took our lines.  However with trying to get the lines right and rigging the passerelle it took us an hour to moor up!  

Richard was still keen on the idea of just having a look around the town and lunch before setting off to Pula.  But after all that effort we put in to mooring the boat it seemed silly not to stay.  Not being mad dogs, but being Englishmen, we set out in the midday sun to walk up to the top of the town.  There is a big church up there.  I’m not sure it was worth the climb in the heat of the day, but we did it.  We then looked around the various streets at the bottom around the harbours and finally stopped for some light lunch.  Well, it would have been light except the place was an ice cream parlour and we had huge ice creams for desert.

Back to the boat to avoid the hottest part of the day.  Then the man came to collect the money to stay the night.  He also gave warnings about the mooring.  I did read some of this on the Cruising Association website.  It is very rolly here and untenable in big winds.  So the harbour man warned up that before we went to bed we had to let our lines out to take us 1-2 metres further out from the wall. He also told us where to go to take shelter if a storm brews up, the ultimate suggestion was if all else fails go out to sea!  At this point I was beginning to regret my decision to stay the night here.

So we went out for a pre dinner drink and to get some WIFI at a bar.  Then back to the boat where we redid the lines to take us much further away from the wall, which means we cannot get to the land! Quick pasta dinner on board and we will go to bed early I guess.

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